KRAPOPOLIS AND KRAPOPOULOS: DEVLING INTO THE EXCREMENTAL

 

I don’t mind the premise of the animated series “Krapopolis.” Using an emerging civilisation based on ancient Greece in order to satirise the dysfunctionality of the modern age and the insecurities of its people is novel and interesting, providing us with enough temporal and physical distance to allow us comfortably, to draw the requisite parallels and make the relevant inferences that will permit us to laugh at ourselves and our foibles.

After all, you can’t get a more dysfunctional mob of deities and heroes than those portrayed in ancient Greek literature. From Hephaestus, he of the public emission while attempting to copulate with his sister Athena, serial rapist and abductor of young boys, Zeus, Hera, persecutrix of female rape victims, paedophilic Theseus, who tried to abduct the infant Helen, to the necrophiliac Achilles who fell in love with the corpse of the slain Amazon Penthesilea, there is plenty there within the corpus of the ancient texts to raise more than an arched eyebrow.

The ancients of course knew this. As a result, a number of the more humourless ancient writers took issue with Homer and Hesiod because according to them, they presented the pettiness and cruelty of the Olympians in their works. In 475BC for instance, Xenophanes of Colophon complained that Homer and Hesiod: “expressed as many unholy deeds as possible of the gods, stealing, committing adultery and deceiving each other.” Given that his name literally translates as “Foreign-appearing Arsevoice,” it is difficult to consider his point of view while keeping a straight face.

Aristotle knew that that when it came to comedy, everything, even the gods, were certainly not off limits, which is why he apparently is reputed to have said: “For the name of these gods there is both a serious and a humorous explanation; the serious explanation is not to be had from me, but there is no hindrance to my offering the humorous one, for the gods too are fond of a joke,” at least, according to Plato, who was born with a genetic mutation that predisposed him against hilarity in any form.

We know that the gods had a sense of humour because when Hephaestus caught his wife in flagrante with her lover Ares, he ensnared them within an unbreakable chain-link net so small as to be invisible and dragged them to Mount Olympus to shame them in front of the other gods for retribution. The gods obligingly laughed not so much at the still entwined couple but rather, at the pathetic sight of the aggrieved blacksmith god, displaying his shame for all to see.

The goddess Demeter also had a sense of humour, as we learn from the writings of Saint Clement of Alexandria, who recounts that encountering the goddess weeping inconsolably after the rape and abduction of her daughter Persephone by Hades, yet another shady character if one pardons the pun, the crone Baubo lifted her skirts and exposed her genitals to her, causing Demeter to burst out laughing and founding in the process, an industry of mass-produced, vulva-exposing Baubo dolls. According to some sources, it is from her that the Greek word for old woman βάβω derives.

The inhabitants of Krapopolis, mortal and immortal, are just as flawed. From self-absorbed minor goddesses fallen onto hard times and desperate to be worshipped and respected, to lecherous and morally bereft mantitaurs, and idealistic but hypocritical would-be rulers, the animated series’ varied characters form a microcosm through which the flaws and incongruities of the modern world can be safely held up to ridicule, giving rise to some inspired dialogue such as that between demi-god Tyrannis and his divine mother Deliria: “You’d let your entire family die to boost your Olympian social status?” Tyrannis asks. “Mortal family,” Deliria responds. “You die no matter what…The social stakes are higher when your social status is forever.” There is something particularly pungent in the state of Krapopolis, if its founders espouse values such as these.

Krapopolis’ comedy is hit and miss. Often the timing is too fast-paced to allow the jokes to be appreciated and the repetition of predictable mirth-bytes that resemble each other, too often results in a wry smirk rather than a laugh out loud. What Krapopolis is not, however, is offensive to the Greek world and one could be forgiven for thinking that our American AHEPAN cousins’ recent condemnation of the series is an attempt to buy into the joke, rather than an earnest expression of affront.

“We find the series demeaning to the contributions gifted to Western Civilization by the ancient Greeks,” moans AHEPA president Savas C. Tsivicos. “These contributions, which also include the arts, architecture, and sciences; and ideals, which include notion of democracy and right of self-governance, inspired academicians, playwrights, and scientists; and revolutionaries, including our nation’s founding fathers, across centuries.” These are sentiments echoed by other viewers of the Hellenic persuasion expressed in various online fora: “Don’t forget who gave you democracy,” one writes, pending production of the Deed of Gift. “If it wasn’t for us, you would all be living in caves,” writes another aggrieved viewer, citing by way of example, Alexander the Great’s expedition to the Indus, solely to make the world safe for democracy and provide a safe space for the production of street theatre.

There are however, a number of interesting suppositions encoded within AHEPA’s protest, that deserve further examination. The first is the idea that Ancient Greece TM, the corpus of its characters, literature and mythology, is somehow sacrosanct and beyond criticism. Accordingly, one can only deal with the corporate entity with due reverence and awe, reciting the prescribed cultic mantras as to the superiority of Greek civilisation and how the world owes all to the ancient Greeks. To do anything else, is to commit blasphemy, which can only be expiated via self-censorship.

The second is that somehow, modern Greeks have assumed the role of high priests of the cult of Ancient Greece TM. Thus, a slight on the ancients, even in jest, is perceived as a slight on their modern descendants. It is for this reason that we are called upon to defend the honour of fictional and rather unsavoury deities in which we have not believed for two millenia, Kolokotronis, for all the manliness his calves exude in a foustanella, arousing nowhere near the same level of admiration among the uncouth Varangians amidst whom we dwell. These Varangians by the way, are not averse to poking fun at their own past by such means as the hilarious television series “Northmen,” but then again when it comes to civilisational altitude, they still reside nowhere near the foothills of hallowed Olympus, the Bithynian one, that is.

The third of course is that the achievements of Ancient Greece TM, are the intellectual property of the modern Greek people, albeit shared with the rest of the world under free licence, for we lack the strength to enforce copyright and levy royalties. According to this view, western civilisation rests fairly and squarely upon the shoulders of the corporate entity, the last two millenia of human progress being completely inconsequential. Our role therefore, is to elicit acknowledgement of the fact that without such Hellenic achievements as the phonetic alphabet (adapted from the Phoenicians),   mathematics (developed after contact with the Babylonians and the Egyptians), architecture (evolved to a state of near perfection after a process of lengthy dialogue and cultural sharing with the Near East) and democracy, (a form of which also developed independently in Scandinavia, from which the western tradition actually derives), the modern world could not possibly exist. Which is why the modern world owes us one, big time, to be repaid in kind, via admittance to the club of whiteness.

While the ancients would have seen the irony in having their descendants act as the cultural theme park of the western world, given that there is ample precedent for this in Roman times, the difference is that at least back then, the key stakeholders would have been privy to the joke, rather than unwitting type-cast characters within it.

Krapopolis may not be side-splittingly funny, but the human condition, with all its tragedy, cruelty, passion, innocence and fervour, invariably is, something escapes the over-sensitive Krapopouloi high-priests. No one was more sincere or dedicated to depicting, understanding, crying over, and laughing at its ever-evolving contradictions than the ancient Greeks, especially the aforementioned Aristophanes, whose “Cloud-cuckoo Land,” in “The Birds,” is a prototype of modern Krapopolis.

As I attempt to navigate my own gridlocked Krapopolis, with its burnt out tobacco stores, littered by a profusion of motor scooters and half-completed road-works, I stifle a chortle remembering the ancient Stoic philosopher Chrysippus, who, seeing a donkey eating his figs reportedly joked: “Now give the donkey a pure wine to wash down the figs!” before laughing so hard at his own joke that he died.  I smother a giggle, recalling Zeuxis, a 5^th century BC Greek painter, who gave up the ghost laughing at the humorous way in which he painted the goddess Aphrodite, after the old woman who commissioned it insisted on modelling for the portrait. And I burst out laughing when I consider that in the motherland of Krapopolis, far across the sea, a former banker for Goldman Sachs is purporting to lead a left-wing progressive socialist party to power. Now that, is funny.

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU 

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 4 November 2023